I’m not undecided, I’m unhappy III
: John Perry Barlow convinces himself to continue support John Kerry in spite of Kerry himself. He blogs on the plane back to the U.S. from Germany:
The idea that we might actually re-elect George Bush is unfathomable – indeed, inexcusable – to them. As one of them put it to me, “We can forgive you for electing him once. As we ought to know, any electorate can make a tragic mistake. But if you elect him twice, we will start fearing you Americans as much as we currently fear your government.” I suspect this is a sentiment one could encounter almost anywhere on God’s blue earth. If the election were global as, in fairness, it probably ought to be, it would be a pulverizing landslide.
Well, that’s offensive on a few levels — namely, suggesting that Bush is Hitler (is that officially a cliche by now?) and going the World Test one better to suggest that the world should elect our President. But keep moving on, folks:
I had a hard time explaining to the Germans why it’s starting to look like we might just re-elect Bush anyway. For one thing, they have not, after all, seen as much of John Kerry as we have.
And let’s face it, folks, John Kerry is really irritating.
There. I’ve said it. And, having broken the surface tension on that spleen blister, let me just get the rest of this off my chest once and for all….
Generally speaking, it would have been better for the future of the Republic if, upon eliminating Howard Dean, Kerry had been stashed in a location as undisclosed as the one where they usually keep Dick Cheney. Then he could have let Bush defeat himself through policies and actions that no sane electorate could have ratified.
But no. He insisted on campaigning, apparently under the misapprehension that to know him – or at least to know that virtual version of him his marketing wizards had wrapped around him – was to love him. This, unfortunately, has not been the general effect. Gradually, I have watched the steam go out of the Anybody-But-Bush crowd as we realized that anybody, in this instance, was the increasingly irksome John Kerry.
People who, several months ago, were ready to go door-to-door in Ohio in order to defeat Bush are unwilling to even campaign among their friends to elect John Kerry. And I have become, I must admit, one of these. Being an actual Kerry *supporter* just seems, well, un-cool.
Nonetheless, he does go on to convince himself to support Kerry. I’ll let you read the rest.
